Book Description

[jd]

"With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years
ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed,
false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil
intent in high places. No reference to the present day
is intended or should be inferred."

This bit reminds me of the "warning" in Huckleberry Finn - "Persons
attemping to find a Motice in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attmpting to find a Moral in it will be banished; persons
attemping to find a Plot in it will be shot."  Much less abrasive but
I assume just as much tongue in cheek.

On 7/16/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair
> of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this
> novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to
> turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen,
> Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia
> at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico
> during the revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era
> Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking
> on the map at all.
>
> With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years
> ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed,
> false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil
> intent in high places. No reference to the present day
> is intended or should be inferred.
>
> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists,
> balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug
> enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians,
> mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage
> magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired
> guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla,
> Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.
>
> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around
> their ears and an unpredictable future commences,
> these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their
> lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes
> it's their lives that pursue them.
>
> Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business.
> Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are
> for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual
> practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken,
> not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact
> occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what
> the world might be with a minor adjustment or two.
> According to some, this is one of the main purposes of
> fiction.
>
> Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good
> luck.
>
> --Thomas Pynchon
>
> About the Author
> Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot
> 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of
> short stories, Vineland and, most recently, Mason and
> Dixon. He received the National Book Award for
> Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/sr=8-4/qid=1152977198/ref=pd_bbs_4/103-6798519-8935851?ie=UTF8
>
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